Flight of fancy shot down

In the Human Rights Act and its freedom of information legislation New Labour has demonstrated a masochistic genius for creating weapons with which it can regularly be beaten. Next month the new supreme court looks set to become another one. Meanwhile, the thoroughly independent committee on climate change, set up only last year, today had ministers running for cover with a call for higher taxes on air passengers.

Ahead of December's pivotal climate change conference in Copenhagen, the logic offered by the high-powered committee, chaired by the ubiquitous Lord (Adair) Turner, was impeccable. The need to stabilise and reverse greenhouse gas emissions gets more urgent by the day and aviation is a fast-growing contributor to the problem.

Therefore, the summiteers should reach an international agreement in Denmark. But, as they look like ducking the challenge, it makes sense to pile on the pressure now. Richer people in rich countries do most of the flying and poor people in poor countries pick up the bill in environmental degradation. So the former should change their own habits – prodded via the price mechanism – with the proceeds being given to the world's poor to help repair the damage.

But ministers have to juggle too many policy balls to be able to say "Gosh, yes, you're right". Guardian readers and cabinet members (shadow cabinet too) may not hesitate to sign up to the 10:10 campaign to reduce their personal carbon footprint next year. But they also know that the wider electorate seems to want climate change tackled, but not at the cost of any great personal sacrifice.

So Lord Adonis, Gordon Brown's cerebral transport secretary, took time out from a high-speed rail conference (part of the green agenda) to assure voters that the government has no plans to raise aviation taxes further. Aware of the irony, he defended Brown's endorsement of a third Heathrow runway – which the Turner committee's chief executive, David Kennedy, hinted might be condemned in its next report.

Across at the Energy and Climate Change Department, Ed Miliband's officials are keen to stress how much Britain is doing. Emissions from domestic flights are being capped at 2005 levels by 2050, part of Labour's commitment to reduce greenhouse emissions by 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. The air passenger duty is already edging up (London to Sydney from £55 to £85 next year) and will do so again when aviation is included in the EU's emissions trading scheme in 2012.

Everyone knows it is not enough, but a want of political courage combines with a prudent reluctance to force the pace. Today the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank suggested going a lot further than 10:10 by giving each of us carbon caps which we could trade, poorer people who don't travel much pocketing cash from globe-trotting executives. That sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare, like wartime ration books without the threat of Hitler to make people behave.